This invention provides a low cost means for achieving affordable solar energy by greatly reducing the cost of solar concentrators which increase (concentrate) the density of solar energy incident on the solar energy converter. A limiting factor in the utilization of solar energy is the high cost of energy converters such as photovoltaic cells. For example, for the purpose of generating electricity, an expensive large area of solar cells may be replaced by a small area of high-grade photovoltaic solar cells operating in conjunction with inexpensive intelligent optics of this invention. The presence of rotatable mirrors in a solar concentrator presents an opportunity with respect to the basic nature of the alignment implementation. Mirrors are normally made of a conductive metallic coating. In an applied electrostatic field, E, a dipole moment is induced in the metallic conducting material of the mirrors because the charge distributes itself so as to produce a field free region inside the conductor. To internally cancel the applied field E, free electrons move to the end of each conducting mirror antiparallel to the direction of E, leaving positive charge at the end that is parallel to the direction of E. Another way to think of this in equilibrium is that a good conductor cannot long support a voltage difference across it without a current source. An induced electrostatic dipole in a pivoted conductor in an electrostatic field is somewhat analogous to an induced magnetic dipole in a pivoted ferromagnetic material in a magnetic field, which effect most people have experienced. When pivoted, a high aspect ratio (length to diameter ratio) ferromagnetic material rotates to align itself parallel to an external magnetic field.
The topic of the dipole interactions between balls seems not to have been discussed in the Gyricon patents and literature. A heuristic analysis shows that this is not a serious problem. The electric field strength of a dipole, Ed is proportional to 1/r3, where r is the radial distance from the center of the dipole. The energy in the field is proportianal to (Ed)2. Thus the energy of a dipole field varies as 1/r6. The force is proportional to the gradient of the field, and hence varies as 1/r7. With such a rapid fall off of the dipole interaction force, it can generally be made very small compared to the force due to the applied field E, and to the frictional forces that are normally present. Therefore interaction of the dipole field forces between mirrored elements (balls or cylinders) can generally be made negligible.